BEVERLY, Mass. – A bitter conference rivalry takes center stage this Friday night as Division III contenders Endicott and Smith College will meet in the first Women’s primetime game of the 2026 season.
While Endicott has, rightfully, received much of the attention nationally over the last decade – having played in the National Championship game four times since 2019, winning twice – Smith has been a consistently competitive team for some time now.
The pinnacle of Smith’s national success came in 2013, when the Bears lost 18-5 to Wayne State in the NSCRO Small College Championship match. But the team has also won a Conference Championship as recently as 2023, beating Yale to win the New England Wide Collegiate Rugby Conference a year before it merged with Colonial Coast to create the North Atlantic Conference that both Smith and Endicott currently compete in along with Yale, Salve Regina and others. A lot of the players who were just starting their college careers at Smith during that 2023 conference championship run are now experienced leaders of a veteran-heavy program that is strong in all facets of the game.
“We have a lot of heavy-hitters in the junior and senior class that are really uplifting this program, but we have a lot of new fresh talent coming in that we’re super excited about,” said Smith captain Anna Taverna. “We have a really strong forward pack, a really strong back line, and we’re working on just putting those two things together, integrating them well … it’s been looking pretty good so far.”
Despite implementing a brand-new system in the first three weeks of the season, according to Taverna, Smith still managed to blank Plymouth State 17-0 in their first live action of 2026. The game served not just as a nice confidence boost to start the year, but also as a chance to see the system in action and learn what little things they needed to clean up before taking their shot at the reigning champs in their own house.
“They definitely are heavy hitters, big in the national realm,” Taverna said of Endicott ahead of the match. “We see them every year, multiple times a year in fifteens and in sevens, though, so we’re definitely used to their style of play. We know how to break them down.”
It’s that familiarity that makes conference games so intriguing. When you play a team every year, often multiple times a year, things like win/loss records, and All-Americans, and past playoff success seem to melt away. The North Atlantic Conference is a particularly strong group, as well, with iron sharpening iron pretty much every single week.
“I think since we’ve been playing these really tough programs, you’ve seen our program just getting better every single season. Every single year. The talent is just getting so good in our conference. It’s actually insane,” said Taverna. “And so just being able to play these really tough opponents has made everyone in the league so much better, so much more competitive. And you really see that every single weekend on the pitch.”
Conference foes often know their opponent better than it knows itself, and can act like a grain of sand in a circuit board, shutting down a well-oiled machine no matter how well it might be humming against other opponents. Smith will need to drop an entire beach into Endicott’s wiring on Friday if they’re going to have a chance, however, because so far this season, dear reader, the Gulls are already HUMMING.
“It’s all about the buy-in, how many people want to win, how many people really care,” said All-American Laryssa Landmesser, one of the veteran leaders tasked with leading a younger, refreshed Endicott lineup. “And you can tell I feel like in the first couple practices, like, the freshmen are so into it. Like, everybody’s really, really into it this year. And I feel like this is the most that I’ve seen it during my time here.”
That should be a terrifying thought for any team in Division III, that a Gulls side which made the National Championship last season and gave Colorado School of Mines an absolute run for their money might actually be better in 2026. But that’s just what Endicott does. Every year, when national pundits (The College Rugby Show) try to label the Gulls as a rebuilding team, head coach Carly Baker and the remaining stars manage to pick up right where they left off the season before.
Endicott opened the fall with a 65-5 demolition of another conference foe, Yale, that pushed them to the brink in 2025. The result surprised even the veteran members of the team who were waiting to see just how long it would take for the pieces to fall into place.
“We weren’t really sure how that game was going to go because [Yale] was such a good competitor last year,” said Landmesser’s teammate and fellow All-American, Marin Shaffer. “But now we’re kind of like, ‘we have this.’ Like, we have a little more pep in our step and we’re excited … Our team’s really starting to click.”
“We also are trying out some new things offensively that we haven’t done in the past, and I think that that’s helping us preserve everybody and work more so as a team,” Landmesser added.
Despite the strong starts to the season for Smith and Endicott, both teams understand that they’ll still have to mind their P’s and Q’s if they want to come away with the victory on Friday night. Smith may be familiar with what Endicott is trying to do, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to stop them from doing it – or that the Gulls will give them anything easy.
“We know we have to create our own opportunities. They’re not gonna hand us anything,” said Smith flyhalf, Taverna. “So, just being able to know we have to shut down the little things, clean up the little mistakes that we are making, and that’ll really give us the opportunity to score and hopefully bring home the win.”
And Endicott may be the favorites coming in, and have their eyes on another national championship title, but they are not making the mistake of overlooking an experienced Smith team.
“We already know that Smith is a physical team. They’re a very good team,” said Shaffer.
“They are excellent at tackling. Every time we play them, it’s like, the first person’s going to get you down every time. Every time,” the notoriously difficult to tackle Landmesser added about the Bears.
The two leaders of that tackling talent for Smith are Taverna’s fellow captains Elena Mierke and Syd Verdugo, loose forwards who pack a punch for the entire 80 minutes. Luckily for Endicott, they have their own dynamic defensive duo in Kiera Greevy and Katherine Waden, two players that Landmesser said she’s quite happy to have on her side. The game on Friday night will be won and lost in the forward pack, which both teams are quite comfortable with.
“We have a lot of fight. We have a lot of grind for each other,” Taverna said of Smith. “We work super hard on the defensive line, knowing that everyone else is working really hard with us. We know it’s something that can really kill us and it has killed other teams.”
“We always want to put out a good game, like, we want to really put our best foot forward and see if we can put our best foot forward first out of the two teams, that’s always our first bet,” said Endicott’s Shaffer. “We always like to try to see if we can get that first big hit or that first great play to really set us up for the rest of the game.”
Both teams also say they’re not just comfortable, but excited, for the opportunity to play a game on a national stage.
“It’s such a big opportunity for our group. A lot of our girls haven’t had an opportunity like this,” said Taverna. “It will just show them what the big stage is like against a really big opponent as well. We’re just excited to play our style of rugby against a good opponent with a bunch of fans in the crowd and with the cameras on us. So we’re excited to show the fans at home the style of rugby we play.”
“I’m thinking about the future of the program,” Landmesser said of the Friday Night Rugby opportunity. “Like, there might be girls in high school that watch this game and say, ‘I want to go play there,’ you know? Like, that’s what I think about. Just the future and the growth of the program.”
If you’re a high school rugby player, or anyone who wants to have a blast on Friday night, make sure you catch all the action on NCR TV.
Also, make sure to catch all the exciting games on this year’s FNR slate, find the schedule and more information here.
Written by Zach Lanning
